Glass Bead Game talk

The following discussion talks about how to introduce The Game to newcomers, among other issues.

I've rewritten the GlassBeadGame page with two things in mind:

• Explaining quickly.
• Boldness.

I timed how long I thought it would take a reasonable person to learn what the Glass Bead Game is, from the older page. I clocked in 20 seconds, before they would realize that they weren't really going to learn it from this page, and were going to have to read elsewhere. Frankly, I think they'd lose interest, jump ship for greener pastures. Right now, we just have to kind of hope that they (A) read the thing, and then, (B) figure out that the real juice is on "PlayableVariant" and "PillarsOfTheGbg."

(Perhaps we should just talk about "the Game," rather than, "the GBG?")

So, I've focused on explaining quickly, and, explicitly pointing to important resources.

Next, boldness.

I put some boldness into it. "We like the GlassBeadGame, and we think it's real, here's our collection of games."

NPOV, right out the window. Wikipedia is the place for that kind of thing, I would think.

Motivation: I re-wrote this page, because I wanted to link to it. But I looked at the other end of the link, and thought, "How Horrible! Horrible horrible horrible! Someone's going to walk away puzzled, if I let it stay like that!"

I'm sure this was just a seed posting. I just wanted to fix it. So that I can link to it. :)

-- LionKimbro [[DateTime?(2004-11-06T18:48:27Z)]]

I don't know where to put this comment, but has anyone thought that James Burke's, Connections Series is exactly what this concept is about? He has connected the shape of the space shuttle's external boosters to the size of a Roman chariot's two horses. It has to do with roads, invasion of England, emigration to America, railroads, tunnel size, etc. Also dynamite and film to elephant tusks and pool balls, and much more. --AnonymousUser?

I agree that Burke's Connections has a lot in common with the GBG, might even be thought of as a form of GBG. One distinction I see is that Burke draws mainly causal connections (A caused B), whereas Hesse's imagined game (and my own real one, Kennexions) work primarily with analogical connections (A is like B). -- RonHale?-Evans [[DateTime?(2007-03-24T03:55:56Z)]]

Hmm, here's a totally different comment from an anonymous user: could there perhaps be a talkpage for this article, as on MediaWiki? wikis? --AnonymousUser?

Done! -- RonHale?-Evans [[DateTime?(2007-03-24T03:50:27Z)]]

My impressions of the Game, from reading the novel:

• It has a temporal element. That is, each particular game has a beginning, progresses through a series of moves, and comes to a conclusion. This is true even though Games may be constructed with an overall theme or aesthetic in mind. A composed chess problem may aim to illustrate an aspect of chess, but still begins from a set configuration and proceeds in a sequence of moves from there. A piece of music may begin with introducing a theme that sets the mood for the entire piece, but it is still a sequence of notes and chords, one after the other. The same should be true of the Game.

• It is not an adversarial game. The player does not have an opponent they are aiming to defeat.

What is required to have a working Game?

• A collection of symbols and rules that govern their behaviour and interactions.

• A method for unambiguously converting any concept from the arts, mathematics and the sciences into a symbol that can be incorporated into the existing collection of symbols. Furthermore, the things that can be done to these concepts in their own field of knowledge should have a counterpart in the Game. For instance, if we have a polynomial in mathematics we can do various things to it: multiply it by another, differentiate it, add it to another, etc., and all these operations should be expressible in the Game.

• Applying a Game move should offer real-world insight. If a move is performed on symbols in the Game it should be possible to translate the result into the fields of knowledge the symbols came from and see a real connection or relationship that would not necessarily have been obvious to begin with.

--TheBigH, December 17 2010